St Trinian's cartoonist Ronald Searle dies - BBC News BBC News St Trinian's cartoonist Ronald Searle dies 3 January 2012 From the section Entertainment & Arts comments Read more about sharing. Close share panel Media captionDavid Sillito looks back at Ronald Searle's career. Courtesy of the estate of the artist and the Sayle Literary Agency. British cartoonist Ronald Searle, best known for creating the fictional girls' school St Trinian's, has died aged 91. His daughter Kate Searle said in a statement that he "passed away peacefully in his sleep" in a hospital in France. Searle's spindly cartoons of the naughty schoolgirls first appeared in 1941, before the idea was adapted for film. The first movie version, The Belles of St Trinian's, was released in 1954. Joyce Grenfell and George Cole starred in the film, along with Alastair Sim, who appeared in drag as headmistress Millicent Fritton. Searle also provided illustrations the Molesworth series, written by Geoffrey Willans.

The gothic, line-drawn cartoons breathed life into the gruesome pupils of St Custard's school, in particular the outspoken, but functionally-illiterate Nigel Molesworth "the goriller of 3B". Searle's work regularly appeared in magazines and newspapers, including Punch and The New Yorker. 'Unabashed ambition' Aside from his schoolday stories, he was a savage satirist, and some of his darker material was informed by his time as a prisoner of war during World War II. Image caption The St Trinian's girls first appeared in 1941 There, he worked on the infamous "Railway of Death" - a Japanese project to create a rail link between Thailand and Burma, the construction of which led to the death of more than 100,000 labourers, including 16,000 Allied prisoners. Some of the work he created whilst being held captive is displayed at the Imperial War Museum in London. Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe paid tribute to Searle, whom he described as his "hero". He said: "He was clever and he was funny and he could draw.

A lot of cartoonists come up with an idea first but Ronald could really draw." However, he added that Searle's most famous creations were a "millstone around his neck". He told the BBC: "He created St Trinian's, which we all loved, and he despised it because he couldn't get away from it and of course he did many, many other things." Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell said Searle's work stood out for its "genuine wit, intelligence and unabashed ambition". Anita O'Brien, curator at the Cartoon Museum, said Searle was "absolutely unique". She added: "He really was one of the most important cartoonists, not just in Britain, but in the rest of the world. "Many people were influenced by his work. He did so many things, he was so versatile, so talented, so prolific. He will be incredibly missed and there was no one else like him." Chris Beetles, who held several exhibitions of Searle's work at his gallery, said: "He had become the yardstick by which all those professionals in his trade judged themselves, and his witty draughtsmanship was the standard to which they aspired.

"Over my 40-year collecting and art dealing lifetime, I have never encountered a cartoonist with his consistency of drawing ability, and such an inventive range of humour from burlesque to surrealism." 'Comic anarchism' Across his career, Searle won a number of awards, including prizes from America's National Cartoonists' Society and France's prestigious Legion d'Honneur in 2007. Image caption Ronald Searle continued to draw during his time as a prisoner of war But St Trinian's was his most enduring work - spawning five films between 1954 and 1980. After a 27-year hiatus, the series was revived in 2007, with Rupert Everett in the headmistress role. The movie also starred Talulah Riley, Jodie Whittaker and Gemma Arterton, making her film debut. A sequel, St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold, was released two years later. Simon Winder, from Penguin the company that published St Trinian's said: "We are all extremely sad to hear of Ronald's death. He was a marvellous, remarkable man and a great artist.

"I can think of nobody who did more to ridicule and undermine 1950s Britain and St Trinian's and Molesworth will endure forever as masterpieces of comic anarchism." A full statement from Searle's family read as follows: "Ronald William Fordham Searle, born 3 March 1920, passed away peacefully in his sleep, after a short illness, with his children, Kate and John, and his grandson, Daniel, beside him, on 30 December 2011 in Draguignan, France.

"He requested a private cremation with no fuss and no flowers." Ronald Searle, British Cartoonist, Dies at 91 - The New York Times The New York Times Art & Design |Ronald Searle, Slyly Caustic Cartoonist, Dies at 91 Search Ronald Searle, Slyly Caustic Cartoonist, Dies at 91 By STEVEN HELLER Ronald Searle , the British cartoonist and caricaturist whose outlandishly witty illustrations for books, magazine covers, newspaper editorial pages and advertisements helped define postwar graphic humor, died on Friday in Draguignan, in southeastern France, where he lived. He was 91. His family said in a statement that he had died in his sleep after a short illness. Lampooning the foibles of the English class system as well as clerics, politicians and even other artists, Mr. Searle was often described as a latter-day version of the 18th-century British graphic satirist William Hogarth. His cartoons combined an ear for linguistic nuance with a caustic pen and brush.

With just a few well-placed lines, he pierced the facades of his targets without resorting to ridicule or rancor. “His ability to draw in a variety of styles allowed him to master all forms of graphic art,” the caricaturist Edward Sorel said. Yet his signature method, a curious mix of minimalist detailing and rococo flourishes using a vibrant watercolor palette, exuded a modern air — sometimes realistic, other times abstract, occasionally phantasmagoric — more reminiscent of the German expressionist George Grosz than Hogarth and his other British antecedents. Continue reading the main story Mr. Searle’s sensibility, though rooted in an English tradition, was decidedly universal, and not always overtly comic. In addition to creating humorous covers for The New Yorker and TV Guide from the 1960s through the ’80s, as well as cartoons for the French newspaper Le Monde and illustrations for The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, he recorded serious news events, including John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960 and the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem in 1961, covering them for Life magazine.

Photo Ronald Searle, shown at age 80, had a peerless gift for reaching the heart of unfathomables like the British class system. Credit Eamonn McCabe He also created pictorial travelogues for Holiday magazine , whose art director during the middle to late ’60s, Frank Zachary, sent him to various corners of the world to report on the growth of postwar industrial Europe and other subjects. Many editorial cartoonists and illustrators who came of age in those years were influenced by Mr. Searle’s approach and mimicked it. Ronald William Fordham Searle was born on March 3, 1920, in Cambridge, England. While his working-class parents, William and Nellie Searle, were not “poor in the needy sense,” his biographer Russell Davies wrote, most of their money went to necessities. Still, recognizing their son’s talent, they bought him a set of pastels, and by age 9 he was drawing credible portraits of his family and friends.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story At 15, Ronald paid for his own art school classes by working for a cartoonist at The Cambridge Daily News, where he also drew traditional continuous-panel strips with clever story lines in the graphic style of the early 20th-century cartoonist and humorist H. M. Bateman. Mr. Searle became a satirist, he once said, because “in the late ’30s, things in general and politics in particular were no longer neatly divided into things black and white.” “On top of this,” he added, “there was the irresistible impulse to draw. I cannot remember wanting to be anything else other than an artist.” Photo Mr. Searle, in a New Yorker cover, portrayed the inner life of cats. Credit 1973 Ronald Searle/The New Yorker-Conde Nast Archive In 1939 he passed a government drafting test and joined the Army as an architectural draftsman. On the side he made impressionistic watercolor sketches of fellow soldiers and cartoons poking fun at military conventions. His work was first published in the magazine Lilliput in 1941.

In October of that year he was shipped off to Singapore, which soon fell to the Japanese. Captured, he spent the duration of the war in Changi prison, which provided forced labor for building the Burma railway, including the famous bridge over the River Kwai. But he continued to draw, using crude implements and scraps of paper, recording the deplorable conditions of his camp and the fates of fellow soldiers. After he was repatriated in 1945, his drawings were exhibited in Cambridge. (In 1986 he published a book of them, “To the Kwai — and Back: War Drawings 1939-1945.”) In 1948, Mr. Searle began writing and illustrating parodies about the impish, misbehaving students at a fictional English girls’ school called St. Trinian’s and publishing them in Lilliput. This led to a series of popular books, starting in 1948 with “Hurrah for St. Trinian’s.” His St. Trinian’s girls were warmly embraced by the English public and established him as one of Britain’s leading cartoonists.

Still, he began to complain of becoming a prisoner to his creations and the cottage industry of books and films that grew from them. To free himself from the burden of success, he blew up the school with an atomic bomb in 1952 in “The Terror of St. Trinian’s.” Photo “Lunchtime Games,” one of Mr. Searle's drawings made in a wartime prison camp. Credit “To The Kwai — and Back”/The Atlantic Monthly Press But he could not kill the franchise; the characters were too popular. It continued until 1959, when he and his wife at the time, Kaye Webb, published “The St. Trinian’s Story,” a compilation. (In 2007, it was revived as a film, “St. Trinian’s.” ) Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Searle began contributing work to the venerable satiric magazine Punch in 1953, at the invitation of its editor, Malcolm Muggeridge .

He soon became the highest-paid cartoonist on its staff and was sought after as an author, illustrator and animator , especially in the United States, where he designed the title sequences for “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” and other movies. In the mid-1950s he founded a publishing company, Perpetua Books. His work has been collected in albums like “Merry England, etc.” and “The Rake’s Progress” (an homage to Hogarth’s famous portfolio of a similar name). Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy As time went on, his work occasionally became surreal and his comedy darker, as in his books “The Square Egg” (1968) and “The Secret Sketchbook” (1970). He continued to focus on familiar themes, like overpopulation and religion, but with more angst; a 1972 drawing titled “The Arrival of God” shows a huge crescent moon falling with a thud onto a large city. In the late 1960s Mr.

Searle and his second wife, the former Monica Koenig, moved from Paris to secluded country life in southeast France, near Cannes, where he continued to work. His marriage to Ms. Webb, an editor of Lilliput and Puffin Books, whom he married in 1948, ended in divorce in 1967. His second wife died in July. Mr. Searle is survived by a son, John; a daughter, Kate Searle, and a grandson. Despite his skeptical, satirical bent, Mr. Searle had a soft spot for animals, especially cats. The subjects of his books “Searle’s Cats” (1967) and “More Cats” (1975), hyperactive and dour, were among his favorite creations.

He was also fascinated by snails, and found a way to link them with terror, intrigue and even sex in his 1969 book “Hello — Where Did All the People Go?” A version of this article appears in print on January 4, 2012, on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Ronald Searle, Slyly Caustic Cartoonist, Is Dead at 91. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Ronald Searle CONTACT Ronald Searle was born March 3, 1920 in Cambridge, England into a working class family. He wanted to be an artist and drew credibly by the age of five and professionally at 15. At that age he was making money for Art School classes by working at a parcel packing firm, when the cartoonist for the Cambridge Daily News quit the paper. In a move that was to affect a great deal of his life, Searle decided to apply for the job. He got it and began a series of 195 weekly cartoons, each of which paid more than a week's salary at the packing house. Continued art classes were assured, but several detours lay ahead.

In 1939 he received his Minister of Education Drawing Diploma and enlisted in the Territorial Army as an Architectural Draughtsman. He continued to submit drawings and cartoons to newspapers and magazines for the next two years, including the prototype St Trinian's panel which appeared in Lilliput in October 1941. That month, he shipped out to Singapore and hell. One month after he arrived, Singapore was surrendered to the Japanese and Searle spent the rest of the war as a prisoner. The prison camp at Changi and the forced labor details building the railway from Ban Pong to Burma were horrendous realities. Searle was victim and observer and recorder of atrocities and diseases and deaths. He never stopped drawing, despite beatings, bouts of malaria and beri beri, and a Japanese guard's pick axe in the back. His art sustained him and, without doubt, many of his companions in misery. A 1943 self-portrait is at left. Russell Davies, in his 1990 book, Ronald Searle, A Biography, has much detail about this portion of his life.

Two vivid passages struck me especially hard: "The Siam-Burma railway was completed on 25 October. A celebrated feature film, The Bridge on the River Kwai, later gave it to be understood that British personnel might have drawn some mad sense of achievement from their forced collaboration on this project. ...there was no question of wasting moral energy on the formation of an attitude to the railway. A man's own survival became his full-time task.

Whatever fragments of concern were left over, he might donate to his fellows and the goal of getting as many out of the jungle alive as could make it." and a quote from Russell Bradon regarding Searle, "If you can imagine something that weighs six stone (84 pounds) or so, is on the point of death and has no qualities of the human condition that aren't revolting, calmly lying there with a pencil and a scrap of paper, drawing, you have some idea of the difference of temperament that this man had from the ordinary human being." His return to Cambridge in October of 1945 was followed by an exhibition of his war drawings and, in 1946, by marriage to the editor of Lilliput and the publication of Forty Drawings, a book of his art. England wasn't ready for the power of Searle's images and the book was a commercial failure. Another 1946 book, Le Nouveau Ballet Anglais, was published in France, also to no great financial success. His second life detour pointed to cartooning, and he embraced it. He made several forays into book illustration, but the cartoons were paying the bills.

1948 saw publication of Hurrah for St Trinian's, his first collection of cartoons and the first nail in the constricting coffin of public preconception. Hurrah and The Female Approach, in 1949, both featured cartoons on other subjects, but it is for the images of the unholy girls' school that they are most remembered. For five years he was to be saddled with the chore of creating mischief for the girls to get up to until, in his own 1953 Souls in Torment, he blew up the school with an atomic bomb. If only that had been sufficient! At right, they appear alarmingly healthy in The Terror of St Trinian's from 1956. They went on to inspire a string of films that probably grew increasingly embarrassing. By 1950 he was entrenched as the illustrator for Punch's theater column, had been featured in an issue of The Studio, and been sent to Paris with his wife, Kaye Webb, for a working holiday that resulted in A Paris Sketchbook. For decades, Searle's life would revolve around various trips for various magazines that reveled in and were enriched by his illustrations made on the spot.

As Russell Davies points out, "He was not making the world look funny, but experiencing it as funny; it was less a style than a psychological condition." In a most remarkably short time, Searle had become one of the foremost illustrators in England. His own publishing company, Perpetua Books (colophon above left), was started to collect his cartoons into book form. Merry England, etc. and The Rake's Progress were among the first published. In 1956, scarcely ten years after starting his post-war career, he became a member of Mr. Punch's Table and one of their highest-paid staffers. He stayed for five years and, though officially working exclusively for Punch, his contract allowed for work outside the country and offers began pouring in from America. Among the first was an animated film, Energetically Yours, for Standard Oil. Its edgy, energetic style was to influence a generation of films, starting with One Hundred and One Dalmations. His first visit to the U.S.also led to a Punch feature, written by Alex Atkinson, By Rocking Chair Across America, the first of many such collaborations. It was an immediate success.

Davies again, "Where exaggeration was required, it took an organic form; Searle would take a style or taste and show it in the grip of some fantastic growth-hormone. Anybody could have had the idea of making a Texan automobile a riot of carbuncular rococo excrescences, but only Searle ... could have make the thing look as if it had arrived at that state by some sort of ghastly evolutionary process." Holiday magazine became a regular outlet, often pre-empting time he might have spent for Punch. He became the first non-American illustrator to receive the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1960. Life magazine sent him on assignment to Jerusalem for Adolf Eichmann's trial. His popularity grew and his life became less and less his own. Finally in 1961, he abandoned the detour and simply packed his bags, left a note for his wife and twins and departed for Paris to begin again down the road to Art. This journey began with a series of paintings that have yet to see print.

Previewed in an American gallery as "Anatomies and Decapitations," these violent and disturbing paintings (73 eventually) seem to have been an exploration and a release combined. Searle wasn't sure where he was going, but the direction seems to have been away from the biting, but approachable, satire for which he was famous. The future, when it came, was going to have a sharper edge. Initially, though, that future looked much like the past, except there were fewer British assignments and a different traveling companion. His flight to Paris was as much towards the woman, Monica Searle, who remains his wife, as it was away from intrusions and obligations over which he had no control. And the line of drawings was changing - the pen nib was spreading and splotching in new, angular ways and the satire had a harder and more bitter bite. (see example from The Square Egg - above right) Lighter assignments did continue during the Sixties.

He did the design for the animated opening sequences for the films, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and Monte Carlo or Bust, covers for TV Guide, travel illustrations for Holiday, art for The New Yorker, a divorce from Kaye in 1966 and marriage to Monica in 1967. Several exhibitions of his work were staged and the public was exposed to the illustrations that made other artists say, "Beware of Ronald Searle, the man is dangerous." Why anyone would willingly put themselves in the jeopardy of his pen is a mystery, but The Hudson Bay Company commissioned him to document the annals of their 300-year old company. The Great Fur Opera (1970) was the result and images like "Life at the Bay" (at left) were pointed reminders of just how dangerous a man Ronald Searle was. The late 60s also brought forth Hello - Where Did All the People Go?

(1968), Take One Toad (1968), The Square Egg (1968), Homage a Toulouse-Lautrec (1969), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1969), and Secret Sketchbook (1970). His output was prodigious and becoming more "dangerous" with each drawing. His ability to observe and render the emotions (and images that could trigger them) was at an all-time high. His road to Art was widening and all facets of his artistic temperament were being nurtured. It was time, unfortunately, for another detour. Monica was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and it was only through the intervention (and invention) of chemotherapy that she survived. Leon Schwarzenberg took personal charge of her treatment and literally experimented her cure. Searle survived the ordeal, too, much as he had survived Changi - he drew. His life revolved around Monica and her treatments, but the need to create to fill up the anxious days was always there.

In 1973 he became the first non-French living artist to exhibit at the Bibliotheque Nationale - a great honor marred only by the theft of three of his paintings. In September of 1975, the Searles decamped from Paris to a new, still more private life, in Haute-Provence. There, in a small French village, they had built a house during Monica's illness - thumbing there noses at the disease. She still was recovering when they arrived but has since been pronounced cured. Searle celebrated by taking on more work. Since the move he has designed commemorative medals for the French Mint (see left), allowed his Paris drawings to appear in a "collaboration" with Irwin Shaw, Paris! Paris!, produced lithographs of his drawings (ah, Art!), created ads for American Express (ah, Commerce!), published his cat books (ah, Sustenance), and created two of my very favorites, The Illustrated Winespeak (at right) and Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable (ah, Satire!). Searle continues to amuse and amaze to this day.

His bite and his bark are equally ferocious, but always delivered with a wink (or is that a sly grimace?). His rise was meteoric and merited and the longevity of his reign is solely due to his talent. It's also our good fortune. Thanks, Ronald, from a fan. Mr. Searle died December 30, 2011. To learn more about Ronald Searle, see: Ronald Searle I went to Perse School for Girls, the real-life inspiration for St Trinians I went to Perse School for Girls, the real-life inspiration for St Trinians Rachael Taylor We did as we damn well pleased The Perse School for Girl’s in Cambridge was the inspiration behind British artist Ronald Searle’s famous St Trinian cartoons. His illustrations of naughty schoolgirls were first published in 1941, and were years later made into a series of books and films, the most recent film being in 2007 starring Russell Brand.

As a teenager, Mr Searle was a sketch artist for The Cambridge Daily News and sketched the Perse girls he saw coming home from school, who he called “a positive source of inspiration” – I was one of those girls. I remember, when the film came out, watching my headmistress on TV talking about how proud she was of how we were associated with St Trinians. She said while the fictional St Trinian’s girls were badly-behaved gamblers who smoked and committed crimes, they were still “independent, entrepreneurial and quite extraordinary young people”. We even got to skip our science lessons to watch a screening of the new film after learning the Girl’s Aloud St Trinians song by heart. All the tropes of St Trinians on film were there in real life at my school. There was the posh totty clique, obsessed with fashion and ponies. Everyone idolised the senior girls, just like in the films – if you were invited to a party by girls in the years above you it was like being knighted by the Queen. Just like in St Trinian’s, it was easy to spot a first year at my school.

Their skirts fell at their ankles and their jumpers were far too large. They also wore no make-up, had their hair in centre partings in low pony tails and wore velcro shoes from Clarks. You then had the geeks. Or shall I say, absolute geniuses. They were the ones who you’d make friends with in Chemistry as you would have no idea what to revise in exams after spending the whole class time drawing pictures of naked boys in your homework diary. I was flattered to have been once invited to a genius’ birthday party. We played with her ferrets. There were the standard emos who wore incredibly dark eye makeup and got told off for having piercings and always skipping PE. My best friend went through an emo stage. I remember when she turned up on a non-uniform day wearing a tutu with stripey stockings. I wish I had the guts to do that. But then again, I was always one of the preppy girls who wore ugg boots and liked Hollister.Co. (I could never afford real uggs though, mine were from Primark, so I never completely fitted in).

So that was me, the sporty blonde girl who was still lucky enough to know all the lyrics to songs by My Chemical Romance and All American Rejects. We had a queen bee too, she was like the head girl in St Trinian’s with her posse of impressionable girls who followed her everywhere. Being last-minute invited to her bat mitzvah was a big moment for me. There were also many differences between my school and the fictional boarding house, which always make me chuckle, down to the little details. Although St Trinian’s was hugely inspired by our hockey girls, (I’m talking rah daddy’s daughters whose french plaits always seemed to stay immaculate even after an entire game), one thing that our players never needed to do was replace their mouth guards. It was never an aggressive game. In fact I wish it had been. If we had all knocked each other’s teeth out on the pitch, the bitchy conversations at lunch might have been slightly more challenging. I remember receiving this face-guard as a present one year. Sadly the only time I needed it was for this photo.

Much to the disappointment of many, our bad behaviour was nothing compared to our fictional counterparts, and a constant desire to achieve left little time for delinquency. As well as this, the downside of going to a girls school was that we would get rather fixated on any event involving the opposite sex, from science days to bonfire nights. This wasn’t shown so much in the St Trinian’s movie. For us, doing activities with boys were the biggest school highlights of the year, and we would spend months deciding on the perfect outfit to wear for the special day. It would be normal to see us donning the shortest rah-rah skirts and back-combing our hair to oblivion just to impress boys at discos, who, horrified by our strangeness, would run away confused about why Halloween would be celebrated in July. Sometimes there would be rumours of “boys in the building” which would spread like wildfire, causing us to run around screaming and pushing and shoving to the nearest mirror to put our make-up on, which we would always carry around with us – just in case. There were differences in the uniform too.

In the St Trinian’s film, the girls could prance around in whatever they liked from skimpy shorts to funky hairbands. What I remember specifically from my school, however, were these not-so sexy nylon gym knickers that we had to wear for running, and I mean literally just the knickers. That’s right, no shorts over the top. Just a nappy with trainers. Of course I kept mine in hope of stripy high-waisted pants coming into fashion. Sadly it hasn’t quite reached the catwalk yet. We also had to wear a buckled belt over our pinafore dresses. There was just enough room in the zipped pouch to put a few spare pennies for the tuck shop at break time. Sometimes we would join belts with a friend just for giggles and walk around attached at the hip until we were told off (for health and safety reasons). In year 10 we would wear our belts with age 7-8 elasticated waist skirts. The waist would stretch enough to fit your waist but the length would be pretty short.

But of course we’d still roll it up a few times anyway, leaving a giant sausage bulge on our waistline that was subtly hidden by our navy over-sized jumpers. Finally, lessons with male teachers were also exciting but not because we were being taught how to make cheap vodka like Russell Brand taught the St Trinians, but because we felt like dogs when they meet babies for the first time. We would stare at them all lesson, not really knowing how to act or respond when they moved or spoke. Their low voices and hairy faces were so alien to us that any male, whoever they were, was put in the annual hot-list. Subtle photographs were taken daily of these species in their natural environment. However the best day was when the school organised mixed netball and we’d get to watch them run around and practise their lunges. So there you have it. My school inspired Searle to create a fictitious boarding school, and I’ll always be proud of that. And although, admittedly, there were some differences between my experience there and those of the troublesome characters in St Trinian’s, I believe my school certainly has that magical touch.

So in true Perse Girls style, we sing “until the end, St Trinian’s, defenders of anarchy. Don’t let the bastards get you down”. 10 Fascinating Rituals and Traditions of English Schools School novels are enormously popular and have been since they were first developed in the 19th century, with depictions ranging from the grim Victorian institutions of Dickens and Brontë to the enchanting world of Hogwarts in Harry Potter. In this article, we look at some of the most famous fictional British schools and see how they compare with the real-life boarding school experience. 1. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Harry Potter has reignited interest in boarding school fiction. The most recent and arguably most famous example of a fictional boarding school is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, attended by Harry Potter and his friends (and foes). Though it’s clearly not based on a particular real-life boarding school, it’s closely modelled on the concept of a British boarding school, and we see many parallels with them – which don’t include the moving staircases, enchanted ceilings and talking paintings!

Hogwarts is divided up into ‘houses’ – Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin. These houses form four distinct communities, and provide a social hub for their members, as there are common rooms for each house, and this is also where students’ dormitories are located. This system is also true of real-life boarding schools, which also get divided into houses; though real-life boarding school pupils aren’t sorted into their houses using a Sorting Hat! Another similarity is the uniforms; though real-life schools don’t make their pupils wear robes (though that of Christ’s Hospital comes close), the colour scheme of those depicted in the films is surprisingly similar to real-life schools. And just like real-life boarders, pupils at Hogwarts are allowed to go on organised outings – in their case to the nearby village of Hogsmeade – with parental permission, of course. 2. Malory Towers Created by Enid Blyton – the author responsible for such classics as the Famous Five and Secret Seven novels, not to mention the children’s character Noddy – Malory Towers is a fictional girls’ boarding school located by the sea in Cornwall.

It looks like a castle, with four round towers named after points of the compass (North, South, East, West) around a central courtyard. There’s even a seawater swimming pool out on the rocks. The plot of the six novels centres on the main character, Darrell Williams, and her efforts to succeed in spite of her fiery temper and the bad influence of her friend Alicia, who encourages her to participate in mischief and pranks. Though the school isn’t thought to be based on any real-life boarding school, at the end of the series the protagonist is heading for a place at the real-life St Andrew’s University, a reflection of the fact that boarding schools tend to offer extremely good preparation for life at the country’s top universities. 3. St Trinian’s Ronald Searle was also the illustrator of the Molesworth series, about a schoolboy at the fictional St Custard’s prep school. Film still from St Trinian’s (B. Thompson and O. Parker, 2007) St Trinian’s is a girls’ boarding school dreamt up by the cartoonist Ronald Searle. It started life as a cartoon series and was later adapted into a number of very popular films.

The twist with St Trinian’s is that it’s populated by girls who are essentially juvenile delinquents, presided over by disreputable teachers. Vice and mayhem rule the day at St Trinian’s; its team sports particularly violent, and murder is by no means unheard of. Though clearly a work of fiction, Searle was inspired to create St Trinian’s by two real-life independent schools: Perse School for Girls, and St Mary’s School, both in the cartoonist’s hometown of Cambridge and the latter a boarding school. It’s also said that the uniforms were inspired by those of his daughter’s school, James Alleyn’s Girls’ School in Dulwich. However, despite any superficial similarities with real-life schools, parents will be reassured to learn that the antics of the St Trinian’s girls would not be permissible in real-life boarding schools. 4. Dotheboys Hall Another cruel fictional Victorian school, Dotheboys Hall features in the Charles Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby. It’s based on an infamous school in Yorkshire called the Bowes Academy, and its pupils live a life of extreme hardship under its vicious headmaster, Wackford Squeers.

The eponymous protagonist, Nicholas, is sent to teach at the school, where he attempts to defend its pupils from the cruelty of the headmaster. The novel features an advert for the school, which provides an interesting insight into boarding schools of this period: “Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled.” As this extract shows, boarding schools have changed a lot since Dickens’ day, not least the fact that modern-day boarding schools aren’t places with “no vacations” where parents can leave their children and forget about them. 5. The Lowood Institution Jane’s experiences at Lowood cause her to prioritise kindness when she comes to found her own school. Film still from Jane Eyre (R. Stevenson, 1943).

The grim boarding school attended by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in the novel that bears her name is, very fortunately, not representative of the modern boarding school experience. Lowood, led by the cruel Mr. Brocklehurst, is a boarding school for poor or orphaned girls. It’s very cold, the food is awful and there are no creature comforts; Jane’s only sources of comfort there are a caring teacher, Miss Temple, and her friend Helen Burns, who later dies of tuberculosis. Conditions at the school greatly improve after Mr. Brocklehurst’s cruelty is discovered by benefactors, who replace him with kinder management; Jane ends up becoming a teacher at the school herself before moving on to a governess position at Thornfield. Luckily, schools like Lowood are very much a thing of the past in Britain; modern English boarding schools are warm and welcoming, with excellent food, and sympathetic staff who provide superb pastoral support for their pupils. 6. Brookfield Grammar School Brookfield Grammar School is the school at the centre of Goodbye Mr Chips, a novella adapted many times for the screen and stage, which tells the tale of a much-loved schoolteacher and his 43-year long teaching career at this school.

The school is believed to be modelled on The Leys School in Cambridge, the day and boarding school attended by James Hilton, author of the story; the central character is an amalgamation of many people known to the author, including his father. Hilton published his first essays and short stories in his school newspaper, the Leys Fortnightly, a reminder of the fact that boarding schools can provide excellent opportunities for preparing pupils for their future careers. 7. Hailsham In many ways Hailsham is an idealised picture of a traditional boarding school, were it not for its dark secrets. Film still from Never Let Me Go (M. Romanek, 2010). It’s apparent from very early on that Hailsham in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go (and its film adaptation) is different from other boarding schools. The teachers are referred to as “guardians”, and the curriculum focuses primarily on art. Pupils are taught that it’s vitally important that they keep themselves as healthy as possible. Behind all this lies a sinister secret: Hailsham’s pupils are all clones, who will one day be harvested for their organs.

After leaving the school, the central character, Kathy, has no idea where the school is, and is unable to track it down again. It’s safe to say that this school is purely a work of (science) fiction, and not based on a real school, but it’s certainly one of the most unusual and upsetting boarding schools in English literature. 8. Abbey Mount Abbey Mount is the name of the boarding school in the film 2008 Wild Child. It’s a quintessentially English boarding school, and the film’s tagline – “A new term for trouble” – gives you an indication of the antics that go on in this school. It’s nowhere near as bad as St Trinian’s, but the film’s American protagonist, Poppy, certainly gets herself into a few scrapes. Poppy is sent to Abbey Mount by her father, who believes that the experience will teach the spoilt teenager some discipline. At the centre of the story is her rivalry with Head Girl Harriet, along with Poppy’s efforts to get herself expelled so that she can return to her glamorous life in California.

The climax of the film is an action-packed game of lacrosse, in which Poppy leads her school to victory – a reflection of the fact that real-life boarding schools are noted for their strong participation in such team sports. The real-life girls’ boarding school Cobham Hall in Kent stands in for Abbey Mount on screen. 9. Rugby School Lewis Carroll, Rupert Brooke and Matthew Arnold all attended Rugby School. The first and only real-life school on this list, the prestigious Rugby School is the setting for Tom Brown’s School Days, and much of what happens in this novel is inspired by author Thomas Hughes’ own experiences of being a Rugby pupil. The book deals initially with Tom’s experiences of bullying at the hands of Flashman (a name that has since come to be used to describe bullies who come from wealthy backgrounds), whom he defeats with the help of an older boy named Diggs. This victory results in Tom becoming badly behaved, but, having been put in charge of looking after another boy, George Arthur, he develops into a well-behaved model pupil. Rugby School’s traditions form a major theme in the novel, including the playing of rugby football; Rugby School was famously the place where the game of rugby was first invented.

Modern-day Rugby is rather different from how it’s described in the novel – it’s even in a different county these days – so if you’re thinking of applying for this school, it’s best to visit rather than basing your opinions on the novel. 10. Greyfriar’s School Greyfriar’s School is the fictional boys’ boarding school at the centre of a series of stories by Charles Hamilton, who wrote under the pseudonym of Frank Richards and was a contemporary of the Jeeves and Wooster creator P.G. Wodehouse (whose style is similar). The unusual thing about Greyfriars is its lack of a House system, which is often used in this genre to provide rivalries around which to base plots (such as the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin in the Harry Potter series). Instead, the rivalries exist between individual characters and between year-groups of a similar age. As in many real-life boarding schools, a high value is placed on sporting prowess, and boys are more concerned with this than with educational achievements. Of course, the top boarding schools in real life ensure that the balance between scholarly studies and sports is maintained. 11.

Roslyn School Marlborough College, on which Roslyn School is partly based, is now better known as the alma mater of Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge. Roslyn School is the fictional English boys’ school depicted in Eric, or, Little by Little, by Frederic W. Farrar. The school is based on a cross between two real-life schools: King William’s College, on the Isle of Man, where Farrar went himself; and Marlborough College, the prestigious independent school in Wiltshire where Farrar was later the Master. The book’s plot is based around the descent of the protagonist – the son of a British couple based in British-ruled India – into vice, with the end result that he loses everything. It was very popular moral tale in Victorian Britain, though it’s less widely read now because of its religious overtones. As these fictional schools show, there’s clearly something about life at British boarding schools that captures the imagination. It’s a setting that gives more modern authors plentiful opportunities for plots centred around mischief-making, while for the Victorian writers who first developed the idea of school novels, the boarding school environment was a place of hardship in which characters could be developed.

The modern boarding school bears some similarities with fictional depictions, particularly in the way in which they’re structured and the rivalries and bonds that form within them. But any parents concerned about the experiences to which their children will be subjected at a boarding school need not be worried: unlike in the stories, real-life boarding schools are incredibly well-regulated and monitored, with brutal discipline a thing of the past, and first-class facilities coupled with superb pastoral care. If you’re thinking about applying for a boarding school, be sure to read our guide to getting into the best British boarding schools . Your email will not be shared and you can unsubscribe whenever you want with a simple click. Why real life St Trinian’s is welcoming boys – but teaching them separately | Teacher Network | The Guardian Teacher's blog Why real life St Trinian’s is welcoming boys – but teaching them separately Boys join the school that inspired the fictional all-girls school. But Simon Armitage says core subjects will still be single sex The Stephen Perse Foundation will teach boys for the first time since it opened in 1881.

Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive Simon Armitage Wednesday 3 September 2014 02.00 EDT Last modified on Thursday 4 September 2014 06.27 EDT Share on Messenger Close When I started working as the director of sixth form at Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge I was terrified. I was about to join a school that had loosely inspired possibly the most infamous fictional girls’ school of all time: St Trinian’s. Ronald Searle , the cartoonist who created St Trinian’s, wrote a letter to our school explaining how it was a major influence on his work. So, it has been quite a journey from being an all-girls institution to the position we are in now where we have boys in our sixth-form, and pre-prep school. From September boys will be welcomed into the junior school, which has always been girls-only except for a brief period at the end of the 19th century. The Stephen Perse Foundation is going “diamond” which means that when pupils reach year 5 they will be taught in single-sex classes, first in a few core subjects and then, from years 7 to 11, in the majority of their subjects.

Outside classes, everything will be mixed. While we decided to let boys into our school, I want to explain why we specifically chose to adopt the diamond school approach which separates the sexes in core subjects. Girls and boys have always mixed socially with friends in nearby schools. There is no longer any valid educational reason for maintaining a gendered enclave. However, there is wide research to suggest boys and girls develop at different rates. Despite years of effort, it is also, sadly, the case that certain academic and career routes are still viewed as being dominated by one sex. This issue is best addressed by separating boys and girls in core curriculum areas to make sure every subject is accessible and relevant to every student. There are a dozen or more UK schools adopting a similar approach. For us, the decision to go diamond was also a response to families with boys asking us to open our doors that bit wider. When Perse Girls was founded in 1881 girls were being excluded from education. We’ve come a long way since then but gender inequalities remain in schools and in society. Figures released this August show that it could be another 60 years before there is equal pay for men and women .

So, is there a connection between our one-size-fits-all exam system that assesses all pupils at a set age, and the performance gap between boys and girls at GCSE? New data shows girls are almost 3% more likely to have scored an A* , more than 7% more likely to have achieved at least an A, and over 10% more likely to have scored a grade B or better), although the A* gap did close this year, by only 0.1%. Meanwhile, The Institute of Physics bemoans the paucity of girls taking the subject and one only has to look around our city of Cambridge to spot the enormous imbalance in engineering, mathematics and physical natural science students at the university. Fewer women study subjects such as engineering, which indicates that something isn’t right compared with other countries. The difference in academic performance between the sexes may have deeper roots. Have you walked through a playground of 11 year-olds and spotted girls chatting and boys charging around? Or have you observed problem-solving activities and noticed how often the girls and the boys approach the task in completely different ways? Boys and girls don’t always do things the same.

My school will be commissioning additional research in this area in the coming months. We envisage some flexibility in delivery of the diamond; for example, girls and boys maths classes might join for specific projects. Teachers will ultimately be able to decide how they wish to shape the workings of classes across a year. Before you jump up and down and claim that I am following gender stereotypes, let’s get something clear. I am not saying that all girls and boys would benefit from being taught in their own groups. However, there is a strong case for acknowledging the different approaches which many boys and many girls do take. It seems that to say life is co-educational so schools should be too is rather simplistic. There is a case for offering an alternative which offers the best of both worlds. Simon Armitage is the senior teacher at Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge. Follow us on Twitter via @GuardianTeach . Join the Guardian Teacher Network for lesson resources, comment and job opportunities , direct to your inbox.

Former and current middle managers reflect on what they would love to have known before starting a leadership role Published: 27 Aug 2014 Don’t forget what it feels like to be a classroom teacher, but do be a critical friend to the head – here’s what teachers who are heading into senior management need to know Published: 26 Aug 2014 Comprehensives are developing their own old school tie, but are still slow to raise funds from former pupils Published: 26 Jun 2014 Headteacher Kate Frood on why large primary schools are a mistake and how excluding the arts or extra-curricular activities won't boost results Published: 22 Jun 2014 St Trinians | Flickr St Trinians Group Description Any pictures that seem inspired by the School and the movies and cartoons. St Trinian's is a fictional girls' school which was created as a series of cartoons by Ronald Searle, a British cartoonist. The school is the antithesis of the Enid Blyton-type posh girls' boarding school, in that its pupils are wicked (and often well-armed).

The teachers (or "mistresses", as female teachers in Britain were often known at the time) are also disreputable. Cartoons often showed dead bodies of girls who had been murdered with pitchforks or succumbed to violent team sports, sometimes with vultures circling; girls often drank, gambled, and smoked. It is reputed that the gym-slip style of dress worn by the girls was closely modelled on the uniform of the school that Searle's daughter Kate attended, JAGS in Dulwich. There is no suggestion that the behaviour of the girls or their armoury shared the same inspiration. Additional Info Accepted content types: Photos, Videos, Images, Art, Screenshots Accepted safety levels: Safe The Fitzwilliam Museum : Home Free admission. Open: Tue to Sat 10.00 - 17.00, Sun & Bank Holiday Mondays 12.00 - 17.00. Closed: Mondays Ronald Searle: ‘Obsessed with drawing’ Until 31 January 2016 Ronald Searle (1920-2011) is among Britain's most popular and celebrated graphic satirists.

Born in Cambridge, Searle is best known as the inventor of the fictional girls’ school St. Trinian’s (1948) and for his collaborations on Geoffrey Willans’ Molesworth series (1953-58). However, as this exhibition shows, he had a long and productive career across a range of different genres. Searle worked as a war artist, but also made drawings for book and magazine illustration, travel reportage, theatre, film, medals and political caricature. This exhibition is drawn from a recent gift of the artist’s work, generously presented to the Museum by his children in 2014. Cradled in Caricature: Visual humour in satirical prints and drawings Until 31 January 2016 This exhibition looks at the methods used by British artists from James Gillray to Glen Baxter to amuse and entertain, ranging from the simple exaggeration of facial features and burlesque comedy, to more complicated word-play and ironic literary allusions. Works in the show are drawn from the Fitzwilliam’s collection with key loans from Andrew Edmunds and Benjamin Lemer.

General admission to the Fitzwilliam Museum is FREE For full details of all events and workshops, visit our website at Keep in touch ... Join the Fitz on & Get regular updates from The Fitzwilliam Museum's website by subscribing to our RSS Feeds. For more information, see our website All images © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, unless otherwise stated 1, 6, 7, 8, 11 & 12. © Martin Bond 2. Ronald Searle (1920-2011), Molesworth © The estate of Ronald Searle 5. View of Kettle’s Yard house. Photo: Paul Alitt 9. Ronald Searle (1920-2011), Cat lecturing in a gallery, 1998 © The estate of Ronald Searle 10. © Linda (Flickr Creative Commons) 13. Detail from Mabel Lucie Atwell, from Peter Pan and Wendy by JM Barrie, 1921 © Lucie Attwell Ltd

Question: Which fictional girls' school did Ronald Searle create?
Answer: St Trinian's